Carriers to Turn Off Stolen Smartphones to Fight Thefts

The companies will begin blocking stolen devices within six
months, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said at a press conference in Washington today with
New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Cathy Lanier, who
leads the police force in Washington.

“Carriers with the push of a button will be able to take
highly prized stolen instruments and turn them into worthless
pieces of plastic,” Kelly said. “What we’re doing is drying up
the market for stolen cell phones and other types of devices.”

Mobile phone theft is a “growing epidemic,” with more
than 40 percent of robberies in New York involving smartphones
and other wireless devices, according to an FCC statement.
Mobile providers taking part -- leading carrier Verizon, No. 2
AT&T, Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) and T-Mobile USA Inc. -- cover 90
percent of U.S. subscribers, the FCC said.

Carriers in the U.S. plan to go beyond deactivating SIM
cards that store a user’s account information and will
deactivate the device itself, using the phone’s unique
identification number.

The companies’ actions “will help to deter smartphone
thefts and protect the personal information on them,” Steve Largent, president of CTIA-The Wireless Association, said in a
statement.

Surge in Thefts

The industry will educate consumers about using
applications and passwords to help safeguard personal data, said
Largent, whose Washington-based trade group represents wireless
carriers.

Nationwide there has been a sharp increase in robberies of
communication devices including phones, smartphones and tablet
computers, often through violent attacks, the Major Cities
Chiefs Association said in a Feb. 12 resolution. The group
represents police chiefs in the 50 largest U.S. cities including
New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles.

The chiefs association in its resolution asked the FCC to
require that telecommunications companies have the capability to
track and disable stolen devices.

Phones are stolen in neighborhoods, university campuses,
trains and buses, Lanier said, adding that “we saw our
communities being increasingly victimized and assaulted.”

Representative Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, filed in
March a bill, which is awaiting an initial vote, that would rely
on identification numbers and a national database of stolen
phones so devices couldn’t be used on a different carrier. The
wireless industry should protect smartphone users from theft and
violence, Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, said in
a March 23 letter to Largent.

“The market for stolen cell phones is now closed,”
Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said at today’s
announcement.